


Sheldon Builds an Ark

by Suez



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hopefully nothing too offensive, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 21:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10930782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suez/pseuds/Suez
Summary: Can YOU build an ark Sheldon? the Reverend asks. Can he? And more importantly, who would he take?





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Story briefly deals with Christian imagery as a setup. I'm not Christian, but I have a great deal of interest in and respect for all faiths. I'm trying to handle Sheldon's scepticism as tastefully as I can (while staying in character).

Sheldon Builds an Ark

 

1.

“There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark,” quotes the reverend, “the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.

Sheldon knows not to rise to it, but this is the second time. The first time Reverend Martin chewed out that verse in his lethargic funeral diction, Sheldon could barely contain himself. He saw the bopping, increasingly greying heads around him in the church accept the words and not a single eyebrow peaked at the mention of the ark. This time, the Reverend repeats the verse, injecting a solemn emphasis on the two and two. The assertion is so firm, Sheldon simply cannot bear it. 

“And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.”

His mom mutters the words along with the reverend, with her son’s right hand clasped in a firm grip on her lap. She squeezes and Sheldon notes the subtle threat. He swallows, breathing slowly. Sheldon quietly reminds himself that in her company he could tolerate the opium of the masses. 

As long as he didn’t inhale.

So he keeps his eyes on his knees, forcing himself not to think of migration patterns and wildly incompatible animal habitats. 

And for Pete’s sake whatever happens, do not think of unsustainable gene pools. 

_Oh disbelief_ , he thinks miserably to himself, _you are hereby suspended_. At least until tomorrow when he should be safely back in Pasadena.

Sheldon shifts in his seat. The heat is unbearable and his body seems to be melting into puddles along with his mind. Meditation is direly called for. Nothing Vulcan or his mother will notice. 

He could try calculating the parameters of escape in the event of a sudden zombie attack mid-sermon. Or infer the types and probability of all possible pathogens carried by the small East-Texan congregation and the likelihood of this biological death soup turning into the next black plague in the sweltering heat of this church. No that’s stupid. No risk assessment of any kind. The last thing he needs is a panic attack in a church.

“Thus as Noah trusted in God,” says the Reverend, exulted by his own statement, “so must we.”

Top tens. You couldn’t go wrong with a carefully considered list. Every top ten list in the world was forged during moments of inconceivable boredom.

Top ten favourite substances according to their interaction with water? Top ten published articles on the degradation pattern of leaves? Or top ten math formulas according to how pretty they looked on a whiteboard. 

First up, Euler’s relation; essential, simple and gorgeous. Combined all the important tools of math into one gorgeous stew. _Beautiful_. Sheldon sighed, a little love-struck. Next, perhaps Callan-Symanzik equation. Or the Minimal surface equation or Schrödinger Equation or Noether's theorem

The reverend drones on, the impassioned cadence of his sermon rising and falling around him, isolating Sheldon in an island of his own beautiful thoughts.

“The church is your ark,” declares the Reverend in a rising tone, inspiring some of the parishioners to clap enthusiastically. “It gathers the most extraordinary souls to the embrace of Jesus.”

_Where were we? Oh yes, Weyl’s character formula … oh you sexy thing._

A sharp nudge in his side and Sheldon yelps out, startled half-way through his beautiful list. The sermon appears to be over and his mother is glaring at him.

“You weren’t listening were you?” she questions him, her sharp eyes narrowing at her squirming son.

“I was listening,” Sheldon says a tad defensively. He quite certainly was, but that wasn’t the same as paying it any mind. 

“Sheldon Cooper, were you thinking thoughts that would make Jesus angry?”

He can’t imagine what Jesus could possibly have against Hermann Weyl, noted Mathematician, so he ventures a cautious … “No?”

The Reverend wanders over to them as they exit the Church.

“Hello, Mary,” he smiles pleasantly.

“Hello Reverend,” she greets in return. “Shelley managed to join us today, isn’t that lovely?

Sheldon grumbles, looking away, Pasadena and Halo on his mind.

“We’ve missed you Sheldon,” the Reverend says. “Did you enjoy the sermon? What are your thoughts on the story of Noah, Sheldon?”

“Patently ridiculous,” he replies promptly.

Mary tenses, ready to caution her son. This time, Sheldon isn’t so easily cowed. A question was directed to him this personally this time. Sheldon _had_ to speak. If the Reverend understood the mind of a scientist, especially one as vital and transcendent as his, he would understand that it was a brutal unkindness to himself (and let’s face it, mankind) to stifle any opinion of Sheldon’s.

So he turns, excusing himself to the exiting congregation for the interruption and raises a hand. They stare at him in polite bemusement. A few of those more experienced in Sheldon Cooper’s past antics, have a kinder, more patient expression on their faces.

"I am sorry, but I will have to be honest” he shakes his head regretfully, “I know rudeness precedes enlightenment and you will thank me for disregarding social niceties in favour of necessary re-education."

He looks at the dumbstruck faces in the crowd and frowns. "Or in this case _actual_ education."

“Let me enumerate the ways in which the story of Noah couldn’t possibly have happened,” he begins. “Number one, capacity.”

He somehow manages to get to point number three on his list of objections, before Mrs Cooper yanks his shirt back, startling him out of his arguments.

“Well well,” laughs the Reverend. “Always a delight Shelley. As always, let’s agree to disagree. Man can do a lot, I grant you that, but I’d like to see _you_ build an ark Shelley.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Can YOU build an ark Sheldon?

“Can I?” huffs Sheldon.

It’s the last thing he will mutter to himself before falling asleep that night.

_  
_

Can I indeed.

And who would I take with me?

****

 

2\. 

The table is covered in printed sheets and pizza boxes. Sheldon’s eye runs over each name on the sheet. His hand occasionally draws a question mark on some of those names and a cross on others. For the last hour he had been trying to ignore the rowdy shenanigans of the impressively sub-ambitious youth of the Kardashian clan on TV. 

Penny probably thinks he had been too distracted with his project to notice that she had turned Pizza Night into _Reality TV Night _. He noticed, the strikes would come later.__

____

____

Howard and Leonard had initially objected to the Kardashian intrusion until Raj pointed out they could watch it _ironically_. 

Hell even Penny who turned into an emotional wreck during every episode of _America’s Next Top Model_ , had been watching the show with the same sceptical amusement as the boys. Sometimes.

After the show was done and Raj was satisfied he won the argument over which Kardashian should run for president (Khloe all the way), Leonard picks up a stray list from Sheldon’s pile. 

“Still doing your passenger manifest for the ark huh? So who am I bunking with then? Neil deGrasse Tyson?”

“Yeah, who are you going to save from the big bad imaginary flood Sheldon?” asks Howard.

Sheldon frowns at the lists on the coffee table, tapping a red marker on his knee.

“Hmm, at the top there's me of course. Then you got your Hawkings etc. All the way down to 6890. I am still doing the math Leonard, but I don't see you sneaking on that list.”

“You're leaving me to die?” Leonard says, a little peeved.

“Hey I am positively _heartbroken_ about it,” he says evenly, “but I don't make the rules.”

“Yes you do,” Leonard exclaims.

"Yes well, even if I bump off no. six-thousand-eight-hundred-ninety (and let's face it Dr Woodruff's last paper on the effects of excessive smiling left much to be desired), there are still forty-six candidates as well as the entire university population of New Delhi ahead of you on the waiting list. "

Sheldon shakes his head mournfully, unhappy at the cruel world and Leonard's stubborn inferiority that forced him to such decisions.

“You do realise my work is responsible for attracting the bulk of funding for the physics department?” Leonard reminds him.

Yes, that was true wasn’t it? Sheldon checks his list again to make sure that none of Caltech’s board of directors accidentally made it onto his list. 

“That says nothing,” Sheldon mutters absently as he continued to organise his list.

"Hey what about me?" chirps Penny, hopping closer on the couch to peek at the list. He tries to nudge her knee away with his own, but she barely notices his subtle hint about spatial propriety. 

"What about you?"

"Am I on your ship?" she asks.

"You mean my ark."

"Yeah your arkship whatever."

"You mean the ark that I'm building for the express purpose of preserving the very best scientific minds of our age, in the event of an acute persistent rise of sea levels effecting a global flooding of all major landmasses, immediately driving the human race to imminent extinction?"

"Yes."

"The ark that will house the very top of human achievement,” he clarifies again, “whose combined expertise will provide mankind with its very best chance of rebuilding civilisation? The ark that will stand as a testament to human excellence, to which as Reverend Martin would say, only the most extraordinary souls will be admitted?"

"Yeah," she said, smiling brightly.

He stared at her.

"No you're not on it."


	2. Chapter 2

3\. 

It had taken two months to calculate the dimensions and another month to design the first concept. Nights and nights spent speed-reading through construction manuals, skipping years of study with just the power of his ego. Two weeks of ceaseless nights of stubborn calculations, moving the balance of numbers until it all fit. Two days in Howard’s design lab to make him realise that he will need another shipwright and a dozen engineers to work out the kinks, because somehow when put together, the numbers didn’t fit.

He does not tell Howard this.

Sheldon phones the most decorated naval architect in United States and formally extends her the honour of building an ark against the flood. It was a marvellous opportunity, he explains patiently, and a doddle to be honest since he had done most of the work. He just needs some helmet-heads to Jenga a few metal planks together.

Janine Herberg listens to what sounds like the teenager on the other side. She wonders how he got her number, one she is sure is private. Not even her assistant Bridget had it. Just her children and grandchildren. Somehow he gets to the end of his speech without her saying a word.

“Well?” he asks.

“I’m sorry,” she says, half-dazed. “We don’t build arks.”

4\. 

“What about all the animals? How are you going to herd two of each into your ship?”

Sheldon turns to her, a look of bewildered exasperation on his face. “Honestly Penny what on earth makes you think I’m going to round up … to even consider … ohh of all the nonsense I’ve heard today … I mean for Pete’s sake Penny, _two of each_?”

Leonard attempts to bridge again. “Penny, that was Sheldon’s original problem with the Biblical proposition. His position is that it was somewhat flawed.”

“ _Somewhat flawed?_ ” he starts up again, his cheeks flushing a dangerous red.

“Anyway,” Leonard interrupts quickly, “the main argument with Noah’s Ark is that it’s not possible for one man to have collected a male/female specimen of every animal on the planet considering the transportation and scientific know-how of the period. That’s without even considering the hermaphrodite, asexual and numerous other procreation methods found in countless species.”

“So no animals on the arkship then?” asks Penny.

Sheldon sighs pointedly at her mistake again, but answers anyway: “Oh but naturally I’m going to preserve what animals we can. I will collect DNA samples of every species known to man and store them in a handy little genetic database. I’m sure with a few thousand scientists and nothing better to do all day but rebuild earth, we can think of a way to clone every animal.”

He pauses. 

“Except bluejays,” he adds. “They had their chance.”

 

5.

 

Howard looks up from his phone.

“Hey guys, Sheldon just texted me to offer me the ship’s engineer position.”

“Why are you so happy about this?" asks Leonard. "According to the blueprints, that means a bunk in steerage.”

“Well I get hang around with the botanist chicks, it’ll be the closest thing to a science hippy orgy.”

“Like you’d have a chance.”

“Hey I’m the guy who makes the toilets flush. In the land of seasick hot chicks I’ll be King. You’re just jealous you’re sleeping next to the waste recycling centre.”

Leonard shrugs. “At least I got to be on the ark in the end. Even if it is as his _secretary_. We can’t all be Mr Astronomer Royal over there with his luxury ensuite.”

“Hey,” says Raj. “I can’t help I’m the only one here who can help navigate a boat the old fashioned way.”

Howard’s phone beeps again. “Oh guys, he says to turn on channel 5.”

Penny quickly turns on channel 5. Stewart is out to get some more Chardonnay, until he comes back and her glass is full again, her tolerance for arkship talks is non-existent.

_“In other news today, a noted scientist in Pasadena, California has started a very unlikely project. To rebuild Noah’s ark, but with a contemporary twist._

__

__

_I’m standing outside the California Institute of Technology and I have here with me Dr Sheldon Cooper, theoretical physicist and modern-day Noah. Tell me Dr Cooper, why are you building an ark?”_

“Oh great,” Penny groans.

A perky brunette turns her microphone to a tall, skinny man not so much standing as withering in the heat and glare of the camera lights. He’s wearing an expression of calm contemptuous patience as he leans in to answer:

_“Well Sheila, because I can.”_

_“Oh my, you sure are confident. And it looks like others have confidence in you too. Did you know someone made a Facebook page for you and it has already garnered over 456,000 likes in just a week?”_

_“What’s not to like,”_ he answers curtly.

_“As I understand it, you will not take any animals with you. Who will you invite onto your ark?”_

_“Well only 6890 of the world’s brightest scientists, plus a handy-man, my dear friend Howard Wollowitz, to do menial chores and tidy up after us.”_

“Hey guys, my name just got mentioned on Channel 5,” beams Howard.

 _“What about any loved ones?”_ the journalist continues. _“Any family? Partners?”_

 _“I would take my mother,”_ Sheldon ventures, _“but she categorically refuses to be on the same ark as heathen Darwinists. She’s not too keen on cloning either I have to say. We’re still working out a compromise I guess.”_

_“Anyone else?”_

_“Well,”_ he considers a moment. _“No.”_

The news presenter blinks at this. _“Uhh well, there you have it.”_ She turns to face the camera. _“This whole project asks the ambitious but unsentimental question: exactly who is important for the future of mankind? And here at the California Institute of Technology, one genius Professor has a detailed list._

Penny turns the TV off and gets up to leave. The boys protest but she shakes her head. No really, it’s an early start tomorrow and there is a ton of ironing to do before.

And she’s just not in the mood anymore.

* * * *

 

6\. 

It takes a week before Janine Herberg connects the voice on the phone with the face scowling on her television right now. Janine puts down her glass of wine and leans in to place that distinct nasal diction and remembers the boy on the phone. The boy who wanted to build an ark.

By the end of the interview it becomes to clear to her that she has changed. That she had forgotten those impossible first dreams of her teenage years. Back when she thought math could do impossible things. She had grown up to play the decades of her career as safe as possible. Safe won awards. Safe won her lucrative contracts. Safe made her famous.

And safe people didn’t dream of arks.

Her fingers search out her assistant’s name. It rings once.

“Bridget darling yes, I need you to get a number for me.”

7.

Pizza nights are not the pizza nights they used to be. Neither are Halo nights anything resembling their former incarnation. The boys are still there. The pizza is still there. Halo is still there. She still kicks ass and the boys sulk and pretend it was an easy level. And plus they were tired. Seriously.

They still have pizza and reruns of Doctor Who. They still all look at her face during key moments to see her newbie reaction to major plot twists. Well, all except Sheldon.

Everything happens as it always does and still, it is all so different.

Sheldon sits next to her as he always. Their knees still touch occasionally and every so often, she still feels a sharp nudge in her side to get her to move. 

Still, she feels his withdrawal as a much sharper nudge, long before she actually notices it. There are papers everywhere. Potential half-models of tiny ships lying in parts at his feet. Chaos surrounds him and there is less of him each day in the room.

Sometimes she wonders out loud why Klingons don’t get a face lift? Or why did Dumbledore get a make-over in the second Lord of the Rings film?

A side-eyed peek at his expression and ... _nothing._

At some point, during another group-night, it hits her. She doesn’t care for Star Trek or _Wars_ or whatever, without his outrage and indignant corrections. Without his wide-eyed love-struck enthusiasm that saw beautiful things in cheap television, Penny can only see crap lighting and unrealistic monster costumes. 

In the past Leonard tried to draw her into it with his own enthusiasm. Like what I like, he essentially pleaded and Penny didn’t. She needed to be shown and it was Sheldon who dug deeper and led her to a startling discovery of new truths.

Sheldon once told her Lord of the rings was about choices, painfully made and seen through its bitterest ends. And when he angrily denied that the Doctor was a _time-travelling superhero_ as she had called it, she had asked him what he was. 

“He is a sad man.”

And she got it. 

Sad and all alone in his brilliance. Seeing the world through alien eyes and understanding it better than most people ever could, because he couldn’t be a part of it.

Not really.

So these days she only comes over for Doctor Who and sits on the sofa and keeps her eyes on the sad man on TV and tries not to see the other one drifting slowly away from her.

8.

It was Howard who first mentioned the Facebook page. It is only when it filters down to the Caltech students, that the Likes jump from a few dozen to hundreds then thousands.

Many people agree that it’s a fantastic rebuttal. _Dear Noah, let’s show you how it’s really done. Sincerely, Science._

The likes multiply through the week. Raj and Howard give a count every night. 

“750 000 likes, it’s shooting up since the interview” Raj delivers the report. “Growth is steady with no sign of stopping. At this rate we should reach one million likes by the end of next week.”

Others think it’s a thoughtful concession to the bible. Dr Cooper, PhD, divinely guided in his imitation of Noah, will give this modern world the ark it needs. Dr Cooper’s prophet status for now remains undecided (but not deemed impossible by some).

“Mentions are off the scale on twitter,” Howard says, beaming wide. _#CoopersArk_ is trending guys.

Penny yawns. “You know this is …”

“Stupid,” Raj, Howard and Leonard finish for her.

“But it is," she insists. "Sheldon don’t you have actual physics-y work to do? Aren’t there multiple universes to find?”

Sheldon resists the urge to correct her about _finding_ universes and resists the urge to snap at the mention that all of his real work is leaving undone. Instead he corrects a few lines on a diagram. The ever evolving passenger list is still resting close by, unfinished.

“Honestly, no wonder Amy stopped calling you,” Penny says. “You are so boring lately.”

“Why don’t you leave,” Sheldon snaps.

Sheldon is trying to accommodate a conference room on the crowded ark and when the door slams shut, he doesn’t look up.

9\. 

“Penny!”

It had taken him a week to notice her absence. Another day or two for him to actually come to her door.

“Penny!”

His project is gathering steam. Janine Herberg had called him out of the blue to ask him for a chat. Their meeting had gone exceedingly well. Like many others, she was quickly persuaded of his genius (even if it wasn’t so obvious from her constant criticism and contradictions of his model). _Might as well have a bit of fun with this_ , she had laughed despite his reminder that this was serious business. They have another meeting tomorrow he has to prepare for and Sheldon simply doesn’t have time for Penny’s nonsense.

“Penny!”

Her name is still on his lips when the door flies open.

“What?” Her blonde hair is soaking wet and a big ball of shampoo foam makes its merry way down the side of her head. Her grip on the towel didn’t stop it from hitching downward in her rush and Sheldon could almost see her left nipple. _Always so sloppy_ , he thinks.

“It’s Pizza night,” he says.

“So?”

“Well there is pizza,” he said. “I don’t know why I have to explain this to you.”

“I’m not coming.”

She tries to slam the door shut, but his hand shoots out it in time. She throws her hands up and yells she’s going back to her shower and to get lost. For a long moment he simply stands by the open door, not knowing what to do. There is a meeting to prepare for and he still needs to finish his action plan for Janine. If Penny keeps obfuscating the Schedule with her absences, he will never be able to concentrate long enough to finish it before bedtime.

So he walks into the bathroom and ignores her shouts from behind the curtain.

“Why are you not coming?”

“I don’t feel like it,” she says, growling in frustration when the highest water pressure still doesn’t drown out his voice.

“But why? It’s not Pizza night without you.”

“Go away Sheldon.”

“But why?”

"Dammit Sheldon you don't even want me on your boat!"

Sheldon blinks. “Ark,” he corrects automatically.

“Whatever, just leave me alone. Go.”

Sheldon lingers a moment, as if her sentence was unfinished somehow, but there are no answers forthcoming so he leaves. At her door, he pauses, looking around the apartment. Everything is still the same. The same unwashed dishes clogging the sink, the same piles of laundry dot the room like ornaments. He tries to imagine her apartment transported to his ark and he _shudders_.

What use could I have for her, he wondered. Why on earth would I put her on the list?


	3. Chapter 3

10\. 

Penny notices the gaps in her own schedule now the boys aren’t around to fill it. It’s not just Pizza nights or Thai food night or Halo. It’s all the accumulated hours that somehow slipped through the cracks and took a life of their own across the hall. She never realised how much of her life was spent with the boys until she began to count.

There is an hour on Saturday mornings where she used to idle in Leonard’s kitchen, waiting for her coffee in their superior espresso machine. There is another cocktail sized gap just before Friday night dinners, where Raj used to linger at her counter asking for what he called ‘lady advice’ as he sipped a Bloody Mary. So many minutes scattered throughout the week where they argued in front of the mailboxes and talked their way up four floors.

But most of her gaps have the distinct shape of Sheldon.

There was the clockwork of Sheldon’s various appointments requiring her company (but mostly her car). She counted the hours in the laundry room. It was 112 minutes for whites, 90 minutes for coloureds. Sheldon would insist she spent the 20 – 30 minutes on her delicates (which she would normally chuck in with the coloureds when he wasn’t looking). 

The dryer could take what felt like several hours. All in all it took a big chunk of her day. Over the years it became easier to think of laundry day as _Sheldon day_.

She does her laundry in the evenings now and spends a big chunk of it alone.

When Raj, Leonard and Howard make the trek to her apartment, pleading with her to come watch a movie, she smiles and shakes her head. Her excuses have worn so smooth now: _Oh my god, I totally have to finish disinfecting my toilet. Shoot, really? That was today? I guess I double booked myself. Honestly, I do have a dentist appointment. What, yours doesn’t do after hours??_

It’s simpler this way. It’s easier to drift away than make a loud exit. No interventions, no dramatic showdowns in which feelings are aired and tensions are resolved. 

She is fine this way.

Just fine.

 

* * * *

11\. 

_Penny_

Naturally it had taken him only a week to think of this brilliant idea. Another week to design it and work it into the model.

_Penny_

If she liked it, then Janine could go ahead and add it to her designs.

_Penny_

“Yes Sheldon,” comes the weary greeting when the door opened. “What do you want?”

Something about Penny looks different. Her hair looks just as frazzled as it always did when she wasn’t going out. There is a stain on her top that makes him cringe in a comfortable, familiar way and her socks are outrageously mismatched. Yet there is a change in her and Sheldon’s deduction skills fail to solve this puzzle.

“I know you are mad at me,” he says to her. He holds up a hand. “No don’t try to deny it, even I know what it means when a woman refuses to do laundry with you. Just, I feel I have made some corrections to the Ark that you might like. Could you please come have a look?”

Penny sighs, wavering between her determination that this part of her life was over and the curiosity to see what he has planned for her.

“Please?”

“Fine,” she says, throwing up her hands.

The boys’ flat is still an uncharacteristic mess of abandoned designs and unfinished models. Sitting on the coffee table however, is a small 3D printed blue model of what looks like a ship.

“Oh it’s complete?” she asks.

“No Penny, this is just a model. An actual Ark is much bigger.”

She almost turns around to leave, when Sheldon picks up a smaller model of a room filled with toy-house furniture.

“What is this?”

“This,” he begins with a big grin, moving his hand to reveal the answer, “is the Cheesecake Factory.”

She blinks.

“I couldn’t think of a place for you on the ark and then it hit me, how to make you happy and cover a design flaw I had overlooked at the same time. See I hadn’t put in a restaurant or canteen. Now I have made the calculations and while this Cheesecake Factory won’t be as big as the normal one, it will certainly be just as good. Franchise rights pending of course. Aren’t you happy?”

“Happy?”

“Yes,” he says excitedly. “This means you have a place on our Ark, as the waitress.”

“Waitress?”

“Well _Senior_ Waitress, I’ll have Howard and Raj assist you during meal times. We all know how long you take to deliver the starters.”

Penny looks at the model Sheldon shoves into her hand. The tables are perfectly precise. Sheldon’s preferred table is in the middle where it always is. She thinks of the time he must have taken to think of something for her and the time it took to build all this.

Her mind drifts to all the hours spent in doctors' waiting rooms, in which her fingers, crushed and bruised, never let go of his. When she noticed that Sheldon’s doctor was a paediatrician, she never said a word, because of course he was. She tries to count all the _Soft Kitties_ sung over the years and trails off at around thirty-five. He has had eight proper Christmases and each one of them came from her. Her mind forces a stop, it does not want to count one more crisis or book signing line or times they slept together because he was sad and he didn’t want her to, but really did. 

It hurts to go there.

“You’re not happy,” he says, sounding a little lost. “Why?”

She shakes her head, feeling a sting in her eyes she hasn’t felt in a long time.

“Penny what is it?”

She looks at him and Sheldon feels his arms crawl with goose bumps. Once again he is overwhelmed by the difference in her.

“This is why you want to save me from the flood? So I can serve you dinner?”

Sheldon starts to think he understands. “I know, but the Ark is supposed to be for all the scientists who can rebuild earth and mankind. It’s already not fair to the rest of the world that I snuck in a random person onto the ark.”

“Random?”

“No no,” he corrects quickly. “ _Ordinary_. If I smuggled in an ordinary person.”

Penny puts the Cheesecake Factory next to the Ark and turns to the door.

“Wait Penny.”

She shakes her head. “You need Scientists, I get that Sheldon. Just a piece of advice, when things get rough, you’ll also need people. Who are your people? Do you have any?”

“I don’t understand,” he says honestly.

She smiles sadly. In that moment he sees the change again and if Sheldon had a better vocabulary for abstract human behaviour, he might have labelled this change as _distance_. As it is, all he really understands is the side effect of this change.

_Abandonment_

“I think it’s best you sail without me Sheldon.”

Penny closes the door behind her.

Back at her apartment, she doesn’t admit the tears, even when she sees the mascara smudges on her hands and feels her throat choking with staggered breaths.

Her hands are shaking when she grabs the newspaper on the table. She sits down on the sofa, finishes the last drops of her wine and starts circling ads that promise one bedroom apartments.

Any apartments really, as long as it wasn’t in this building.


	4. Chapter 4

12.

Over the next few days, Sheldon’s mind runs through a carousel of faces that had passed him by in the last thirty years. He never would have guessed that someone so focused on the grand questions in life could ever take notice of more than a handful. 

But when prompted to consider _his_ people, dozens upon dozens of faces come to him. People he hadn’t thought about in years. He remembers lunches and conferences. Concepts discussed, repeated slights and glorious rivalry. He recalls the small comforts given by the people who took their place in his routine; people like his barber, his paediatrician who serenely listened to every ailment of his alarmingly aged patient. The infuriating Reverend Martin who drove Sheldon up every wall of reason but still ministered to him those torturous weeks he suffered with shingles and told him amusing parables he couldn’t argue with because they involved very little science.

He thinks of his sister, hands on hips facing down an army of bullies and when their mother demanded to know why both kids shuffled home bloody and bruised, she told a rousing tale of how little Shelly had to come to defend the honour of his big sister against a dozen highly armed teenagers.

There is Leonard who will never be a serious rival, but who despite performing the most menial physics research imaginable, was still the very best in the world at what he did. 

Isn’t what one needs at the end of all things? The very best. The best friends, the best accomplices, the best defenders. The dowdy old paediatrician who will never spearhead ground-breaking research, never put his name to a cure or disease, but lord darn it if he isn’t the best doctor in the world to treat Sheldon Cooper, PhD.

He stares at the model standing stately on its display desk. The acrylic paint gleaming gloriously under his desk light and he imagines the life on that ship. The futures they will search for and all the old things he would save for this new world. 

Will she make it better, he wonders, not for me, but for everyone?

He thinks of the world, its tragedies, its triumphs. The lofty institutions that rose mankind to the moon and beyond. He thinks of Doctor Who and Mozart and MRI machines. Vaccines and the Kardashians and Pad Thai. The world and its many wonders and infuriating quirks destroyed in a single flood. The ark was designed as a means to survival, but also as a symbol of hope.

He wipes his brow, the air feels thick in his mouth, like something he strains to swallow. The world and its many wonders. How much could he hope to keep? Where would he even begin? How much could he recreate? What is he even hoping for?

He thinks of Penny, lost along with the relics of the old world. Did it matter that they could clone all the animals again or build new buildings? Sheldon didn’t care about animals or buildings. What is the point of rebuilding the world without so much of what made the world … _work_? What did having the finest surgeons on board mean, if there was no one to sing Soft Kitty to you when you were sick?

He thinks of Penny a lot over the coming weeks. He has tried to count her absence and by his best estimate, if you tallied up time spent over a whole month, there was on average a quarter of his day that didn’t have Penny in it. A quarter of his day in which there was no one to correct, no one to challenge him. A quarter of his day in which spent staring at the door, waiting for her to come in.

_I think it’s best you sail without me Sheldon._

Would she even want to come, to this new world? What could it offer her? His hands shift through the papers and find the manifest he had scribbled on some printing paper. So many names, so many excellent people. Mankind would have a chance at restarting everything all over again, but would he?

He looks at the list again with new eyes and he wonders.

Who would make this world better, for Penny?

* * * *

13\. 

Penny is happy again. There is a new ring in the spring air and the new friends she made have no trace of _science_ in them. The first few months she has a weight in her stomach that startles her thoughts at random moments. At first she calls this _freedom_. It is a heavy thing when one isn’t used to it. So she drinks and dances and looks for pretty faces in the crowds. After a while the weight changes to something else, something lighter and it really does begin to feel like freedom, especially from the past. 

She meets Jason in the rain when she is a little tipsy. Jason is another pretty face but this one catches her before she falls on a rain splattered sidewalk. Jason continues to try and catch her the rest of the year. She tells him she’s not ready for anything. He understands. No, she says, I’m really not. Even when he moves in and puts his name on her utility bills, she’s just not ready. Something of this reminds her of Leonard

“I know you’re not ready,” he says one day, but he slides the ring on to her finger anyway.

The ring feels like another weight in her stomach. She calls this one _love_ , and like her old freedom, she hopes it’ll ring true one day.

* * * * 

14\. 

“I’m sorry Leonard,” he hears through the door. It’s Howard’s tempered voice.

“Yeah man, I know it’s not easy,” says Raj.

Sheldon slides his key in and the door opens to the melancholic tableau of Leonard with his hands in his hair (sitting in his spot), flanked by Raj and Howard like consoling angels.

“What’s going on?” Sheldon asks.

Howard shuffles to Sheldon, his voice low and conspiratorial. “Leonard just found out on Facebook that Penny is engaged to be married. He’s having a hard time.”

Sheldon blinks. “Why is he having a hard time?” he blurts out.

“Well I don’t know," Howard snaps, "maybe because the woman he loves is marrying someone else."

“Now I know why she wasn’t returning my calls,” Leonard mumbles, oblivious to their conversation.

When the boys put Leonard to bed, asking him to promise not to do anything stupid like call or text Penny, they leave the apartment. Before Howard leaves, he turns Sheldon who has since reclaimed his spot and has kept his eyes on a piece of paper for most of the evening.

“Don’t be a jerk,” he warns Sheldon. “Not now, not for a few weeks.”

“Because he lost the woman he loves?” 

“Yes.”

Sheldon nods quietly. When Howard is gone, the tension rushes out of him and his head crashes heavily into his hands. In his right hand, the passenger manifest crumples under the strain.

_So that’s why she isn’t returning my calls_ , he thinks.

* * * *


	5. Chapter 5

15.

Janine Herberg has not been idle. In her own way, she is as possessed as Sheldon Cooper. Naturally, no one will give her money to build an ark and no matter how often she tries to explain it to Dr Cooper, he simply doesn’t understand why no one will give them millions of dollars to build a frankly _ornamental_ ark.

That doesn’t mean people aren’t interested. Oh they are. Her ambitions have scaled down to building a working model, a giant sculpture. The city of Pasadena and various arts organisations can’t wait to throw money at her if she promises to place the ark in one of their town squares.

She takes two steps back, the warehouse silent around her as she evaluates the final touches. After an hour she turns back with a big smile to the great applause of her engineering and arts team. Janine dials the number.

“Hello Dr Cooper,” she says. “Wanna come have a look?”

The next day, Dr Sheldon Cooper looks at the towering piece of art before him and he smiles at the letters on the ark and finds that Janine has been a woman of her word and not changed a single thing. Every room is where he wants it. At the top, stands the crow’s nest from which he would spy new land and life and the way it glitters in the sunlight makes him sigh.

“It’s perfect,” he says. “Just perfect.”

* * * *

16.

The unveiling is due any moment now and the cameras flash brightly in the faces of wealthy donors. The clinking of champagne glasses rings louder than the music droning in the background. 

In the middle of the square, is a hulking metal rectangle that hides the sculpture behind some drapes. When the lights dim, the mayor takes the stage to introduce Janine Herberg, the country’s most celebrated naval architect.

Janine smiles at the crowd and explains the long arduous journey from when Dr Sheldon Cooper first approached her with this insane challenge to build a modern Ark to the this very moment in which their insanity comes to fruition. They originally made plans to build a working Ark, but since no one will finance an Ark, they decided to build a sculpture instead. This one however, is architecturally sound to every last detail. Except for the finishing material.

“Hey if it doesn’t have to float, we might as well make it look pretty,” she jokes and the audience cheers, impatient to see what it looks like.

“Without further ado, I give you the man who answered his Reverend’s challenge with such gusto, Dr Sheldon B Cooper.

Somewhere in the crowd, a mother sits with her hands clasped to her heart as she listens to her son speak. Naturally her initial hope that her son had somehow heard the Lord’s call and was moved to do his bidding, were dashed when he told her it was for science. She had not spoken to him after he explained that he would invite stem cell-meddling unbelievers on board. However, she is a mother first and a Christian second. The mother in her will always be thrilled to see her little boy on stage being lauded by others.

“Who knew our Shelley could do something like this,” gushes Reverend Martin, elbowing Mrs Cooper with enthusiasm.

They had travelled on an early train, paranoid that there would be no seats left if they dawdled and possessed with curiosity to see Sheldon’s handiwork in the flesh.

Sheldon takes the microphone, blinking into the spotlight but when he speaks, his voice is steady, assured like someone who’s accomplished all he set out to do. He wishes the crowd a good evening and thanks Janine Herberg for her talented contribution to their project. Somehow he manages to avoid insulting her and Janine smiles. He explains the challenge the Reverend posed to him all those months ago.

The Reverend beams, elbowing Mrs Cooper so much she attempts to shuffle discreetly to the next chair over.

“Well we didn’t build a _real_ ark,” he says. “But we built something better. A reminder. That in this world, there are things worth saving.”

The room erupts in applause, with Mrs Cooper and the Reverend clapping the loudest of all.

“Without further ado, I give you ….”

* * * *

17.

Penny grabs the remote control from Jason. Her fingers are sticky with glue from the wedding invitations she is haphazardly putting together, but she doesn’t care. Her fingers move like a hummingbird until she finds the local channel again.

“Hey I’m trying to find the game. It’s starting any minute.”

She ignores Jason and kneels closer to the TV.

“Did you hear what he said?” she asks him. “What they called it?”

“What? Calm down honey, what’s going on.”

She shakes her head, as her fingers urge the volume up on the remote control. “I don’t know, I just thought I heard …”

A woman is facing the camera. _“Here we are at the unveiling ceremony for the world’s largest reproduction of Noah’s Ark. We are finally joined by Dr Sheldon Cooper, who first proposed this outrageous idea._

Penny is shocked at the sight of him. _It's Sheldon. It's really him._

Has he not been sleeping? And what the hells has he been eating? She didn’t think it was possible to get any skinnier. _Are the boys not looking after him anymore?_

“Could you please explain to us, why it’s called Penny’s Ark?”

“Oh my God,” she whispers. 

Sheldon frowns, as if the question puzzles him, but he answers like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Because if the world ends, I need these scientists to rebuild it. For her. For Penny.”

“Who is Penny?”

He hesitates as if no one had asked him this question before. “She’s my friend and the reason this world’s worth saving.”

“Is she here tonight?”

He shakes his head briefly. “But I wish she were.”

Penny drops the invitations in a daze. Her eyes are fixed on the TV and Sheldon is still talking but she doesn’t hear what he’s saying anymore. 

“Hey where are you going?” Jason asks.

She only vaguely notices that one hand is reaching for the handbag dangling from the coat hanger and the other one for the door.

“I … I have to go.”

* * * *


	6. Chapter 6

18.

The Arks stands centred in the square and the sheer size of it makes Leonard, Raj and Howard feel like they are on the cusp of some kind of history. It is just a sculpture and they don' really know what it will come to mean in the years to come, but even so they feel the sense that they are a part of something. 

It is made entirely of a type of plastic that make the planks look like ethereal crystal. Like a vessel out of a fantasy novel. Through the planks, they can see the individual quarters and sections, separated by chrome bars. For something that feels so vast, it almost looks to be floating.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Leonard mutters to Sheldon when they finally meet each other in the crowd.

“Neither were we I think,” says Raj.

“Do you … ?” Leonard tries the question, but feels he can’t finish it.

“I don’t know,” Sheldon answers anyway. “I know I just miss her.”

Leonard puts a hand on Sheldon’s shoulder, but his eyes are still on the golden calligraphy on the side of the ark.

“Me too buddy.”

They stand a moment staring at the name of the ark in silence.

“By the way,” Leonard says. “Thanks for getting me on board.”

“Of course,” Sheldon says graciously. “You are important too.”

The tears welling up in his eyes are their own reply, so Leonard simply nods and mumbles:

“Thanks buddy.”

* * * * *

19.

“Do you like it?” Sheldon asks the Reverend.

The Reverend says yes. For a church orator, his words fail to say more. He is only a small town reverend, there are no words for something so beyond his imagination.

There is something in that sculpture that fills the Reverend’s heart with gladness and pride he hasn’t felt in a long time. While he is happy with his role in the community, he is also realistic enough to know that not a single parish member ever remembered his sermons. To think that one child, out of so many, had listened and went on to build a testament to his very words, well wasn’t that just something! Whatever Sheldon’s motivation, the Reverend sees only see passion in the graceful Ark before him and wherever he sees passion, he sees God.

Over the years, the Reverend would return to this very spot. Every November, he will without fail buy a train ticket to Pasadena and walk to this square and gaze upon the Ark he helped inspire. Even as his joints get painful, his eyesight gets worse and he can barely make out the details of the sculpture, he will stand there and watch. When he can no longer read the names engraved on the golden plaque fixed to the side of the ship, his fingers will slide down about ten places or so and caress the name marked their for eternity.

_Reverend Anthony Martin._

In his mind he will still see the way the Ark shimmered like a ghost in the sun. He will drink in the memory, think of Sheldon Cooper and smile.

* * * *

20\. 

She sees the ark before she sees its designer. For the longest time Penny stands spellbound before the vessel, feeling so small and insignificant before this giant monument.

There are only a few people in the world who will ever see their name fixed to something truly beautiful. Penny could never have imagined to be counted among them.

Yet there it is, emblazoned like a signature, like a golden declaration across the side of the Ark.

_Penny’s Ark_

“You’re not happy?”

Behind her stands Sheldon, looking as lost he did the last time they spoke. The crowd around them float past them and the music blares louder than it had before because it is cocktail time now. Still, they stand apart from the noise as if it doesn't exist in the unbearable vacuum of their silence.

She had rushed here as fast as she could, cutting off several people in a row. There had been no time to think of what to say when she finally saw him.

She will be thinking of Jason at some point during the night, but in that moment, there is only Sheldon.

_It was always Sheldon_

__

__

_Of course_

“What is my job?” she asks.

“Your job?”

“Yes my job.”

His eyes widen. “Did you not look at the passenger manifest?”

She shakes her head. Before she can ask where it is, his hand slides into hers and he leads her closer to the ark. Penny sneaks a glance at his face as they walk through the crowd. There is a change in him and she cannot find the word for it. The side effect of this change was that he held her hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.

On the bottom left hand corner of the ark was a golden plaque, sculpted like an ancient horizontal scroll on which thousands of names were scribbled.

Sheldon guides her hand to the name marked, No. 1.

_Captain Penny_

Her lips tremble, her heart leaps in her chest, there is a shake in every fibre of her being and when she cries, she cries earnestly, because there’s simply no time to hide from tears like this.

“Y-you made me a c-captain?” she says, her voice staggering through its syllables.

“Well it’s your ship.”

“Ark”, she corrects automatically. 

He shrugs, but looks down quickly to hide his embarrassment at the error. 

“Why would you give me your ark Sheldon?”

“You’re important … to me,” he mumbles. “I would give you everything. I wanted to tell you that … before you left, but I never got the chance.”

Penny decides in that moment that she doesn’t know anything. Nothing in her experience could have prepared her for those words. How could you know a person for years and never expect _this_. 

She turns to him. The change she had seen in him earlier, she understands now. It is _love_ and she feels it too, like a light in the pit of her stomach. 

His eyes are on the ground and she knows his hands are trembling in his pockets, because hers are too. Still, she uses them to draw his face closer to her. The surprise in his blue eyes surprises her too.

“You can’t say that,” she says sternly, but it comes out like a whisper. “And not expect a kiss.”

When her lips find their way to his, the moment feels hesitant, the unfamiliarity of it comes at them like a surge of fear. But Penny holds the course and Sheldon manages not to break away. They stay with the kiss, waiting to see where it leads, what it finds. After a moment, the kiss deepens and Sheldon commits to the strangeness of it.

Sheldon had given up his hope of ever speaking to her again. The work on the Ark was the only thing that kept him going through the days. The day he saw her name settled at last on the ark, it felt like a moment of goodbye. This whole evening had been one long goodbye to Penny.

Until she came back. And she cried and kissed him.

And this kiss feels like the longest beginning and he wishes it would never end. He kisses her harder, deeper and the feeling hits them both that this right here, is a moment of overdue correction in the world. Whatever kept them apart before, it was an error, a bug, a failing of the universe. Him against her lips was a truth that should have been all along and they both feel like breathing easy now, because a great wrong was just righted in this world.

It will take months for Sheldon to understand what had happened and how his world would change with Penny in it. But change it would, because from the moment her lips caught his, he knew there was always going to be a world worth saving.


	7. Epilogue

Epilogue.

It is November 7th and the room is getting ready for the ceremony. The town square is covered in canopy and light and waiting cameras. A single aisle cuts through the chairs in which many distinguished scientists fidget with their ceremony programs. There is no guarantee whose name will be called today or struck off and the tension is palpable.

Behind the empty stage, the beautiful ark shines like clear amethyst in the purple spotlight. Many scientists have come from outside the state and country and some of them have never seen the ark before.

It is always the same reaction. _So much bigger than expected._

The lights dim and the voices fade as a man climbs the stage and reaches for the mic. He is Dr Wilson, a Penny’s Ark passenger for twenty years. 

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Dr Wilson says. “Welcome to the fifteenth Annual Penny’s Ark Manifest. Before we begin with the list and the amendments, it is best that we start at the beginning.

"In 2015 Dr Sheldon Cooper, before his ground-breaking work in dark matter research, was just a young physicist who was challenged by his Reverend to build an ark. He began his work as an exercise to distract him from his stalled research. Within a few months this project grew into so much more.

"Once upon a time Dr Sheldon Cooper fell in love with a waitress called Penny. It was then he began to wonder, when all is lost, who can rebuild the most perfect world for Penny?

"He made a manifest of 6880 passengers to take with him on the ark, most of whom would have to be the finest scientific minds of the world. This list, scribbled on a crumpled A4, is still on display in the Sheldon Cooper Museum in Pasadena, with a second amended list at the Natural History Museum in New York.

"As we all know, when Dr Cooper passed away he directed the Cooper Foundation in his will to apportion part of his vast wealth to the Penny’s Ark Manifest. One of the most prestigious research grants available in the world. Every year the PAM committee convenes to assess the Ark’s manifest and determines which scientists deserve to stay on the list and which new scientists can join the vacant spaces. The recipients enjoy not just the prestige of a million-dollar grant, but also the honour of seeing their name chiselled on the Ark behind me, joining the undisputed ranks of the most important scientist living today.

"So like every year, we will start by asking the question Dr Sheldon Cooper once asked:

"Who will make the world better, for Penny?”

A thunderous applause rings through the room, many have heard the famous question before, but on this night with the light of the Ark beckoning them, every last scientist in the room carries the same answer in their heart.

_I hope it’s me._


End file.
